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When one dies, the other does too.

The Fire Sermon

The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig

Advanced Reader Copy!!! (How great are these?)

Post-apocalyptic is the fad right now. Some of it is good and the movies have been fun for the most part. The Fire Sermon is the first in a new trilogy that just might be able to stand with the best of them.

Francesca Haig twisted the dystopian genre in a way that is interesting and adding some elements that I appreciated. Machines caused the apocalypse and even though 400 years later humanity has made a comeback, technology has not. Technology is always the bad guy but when civilization is able to get back on its feet we see technology spring forward as well. Haig went screaming in the other direction, reverting humanity back to horses and carriages.

Haig created an interesting plot with the Alphas and Omegas. Everyone is born as a twin, no exceptions. The Alpha is perfect and the Omega has some sort of deformity, be it a missing arm or a third eye. The main character Cass is an Omega but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She was born a Seer. Feared by the Alphas and hated by the Omegas. I liked Cass as a main character for the most part. She was complex. But sometimes I wondered if she was too complex for her own good. Cass would explain her motivations and beliefs a lot throughout the book, to different people. But those conversations were always a little muddy. I started to wonder if Haig was having a hard time explaining the driving force behind the plot or if she doesn’t know her main character very well. The writing overall was good and any other conversation was concise. It was just Cass I had a hard time following every now and then. The Fire Sermon never slows down in its 370 pages. I kept wondering what Haig could possibly put into two more books but she does leave us with questions. I’m looking forward to following Cass and what will become of the Resistance in the next two installments.

The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig is expected to be published March 10, 2015 by Gallery Books